Five Shopping Cart Mistakes That Will Drown Your Sales

October 19, 2014

4:00 pm

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What’s the goal of every online business? Make huge sales.

You must pay attention to some essentials in order to accomplish that task. Have a persuasive landing page. Write a compelling sales copy. Organize a smooth checkout process. This last one is especially important — carrying your customers from first to the last step without them clicking away is no easy task. However, many business owners tend to overlook checkout process, deciding to pay more attention to the first two marketing pillars. Their choice.

Shouldn’t be yours.

However, if you want to be truly successful, you have to have all three. It’s an easy formula. Landing page catches attention. Sales copy persuade people to follow. Checkout process makes them pay. Losing one is something that drowns sales and overall profits.

If you have been wondering why your sales are not as great as they should have been, maybe it’s high time you check how your shopping cart is organized. In this article we have gathered five most popular shopping cart mistakes — please, don’t make them.

1. Confusing Checkout

Not every customer will have the patience for a long checkout process. Many just won’t bother navigating through your mess to get to their desired product. There’s a lot of stuff on the Internet simply screaming for your attention. Your customers will click away in seconds and next moment they’ll look for other merchant sites. And there they will get the same product without any hassle. And they won’t remember you. LegalZoom has over 20 pages of questions that need to be answered while forming an LLC. Talk about a long, confusing and winding checkout process.

Ensure that you have a streamlined process that is simple enough to the checkout. Buy a proper theme if you need to. What should you pay attention to? Simplicity. Don’t forget that checkout is not customer’s goal, their goal is buying your product and shopping cart is an obstacle first and foremost. Make that obstacle as nice and unobtrusive as possible. For example, making all of your text fields on the page compulsory is a really bad choice.

2. Offsite Checkout

No matter what service or product you offer, it’s better if you sell them on your own site. There are solutions for that, they are simply. There’s really nothing more frustrating for a customer than to find themselves on a different website in the middle of the checkout process. It’s like being lost twice. Talking from experience, there’s a big chance they would simply abandon the process.

Today’s shoppers expect simplicity. They don’t have time. Keep that in mind.

The reason why eCommerce sites opt for offsite checkout is because while the entire site runs on normal unsecured connection, checkout pages are supposed to be on SSL. With Google’s latest update on SSL, sites that have SSL throughout are rewarded with higher rankings. With offsite checkout being a conversion issue along with the added benefits of adopting to SSL, it’s a good time to make the entire site run on SSL.

3. Compulsory Registration

It can be tempting to have your customers register the minute they add something to a cart. However, this policy can negatively affect the impact of your sales. You should understand that customers strongly resent having to register or sign up for an account. They already did so for hundreds of time. They know that their email address is needed to receive order confirmation, but they don’t want to be forced into a sign up process.

Instead, give them something a reason to have an account. A small discount will work wonders. And no, mailing them about your new deals is not a reason to register.

4. Being Slow

A slow loading website can cause visitors to abandon shopping in the checkout process. Once again: they don’t have time for that! Unless you’re selling something really unique, going elsewhere is always an option. With faster internet speeds worldwide, a slow website isn’t something you can afford.

Good news: just as a slow website makes people leave, a quick one makes them buy more. The more pleasant your checkout process is, the more people will buy.

5. On-site Issues

On site issues can cause shopping card abandonment easily. Quick example: Flipkart.com had an issue when adding more than 10 items in the shopping cart would be impossible. A message kept popping saying that the user has already added 50 items on the cart. Now, do you think the customer will follow the checkout process? Of course not — they will be afraid that your site will actually charge them for 50 items.

Keep track of such things. Keep track of your feedback. Always check how your site is working. Remember that people today have dozens, if not hundreds of places to buy stuff from. To be successful, you have to persuade them that you’re the best.

In Conclusion

If you have an online business, it’s only natural to assume that you want to make huge sales and get good returns. How to make that dream come true? Make it easy for your customers to buy your products. Don’t make them go through a complex process. Their lives are already complicated enough.

Keep in mind these shopping cart mistakes, address them effectively and quickly. You will be surprised at the results.

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George is a writer who's interested in all things web design, social media and building a better web. He has contributed to ace conversion optimization blogs like ConversionXL and Crazy Egg. You can hire him for your content marketing needs anytime you want.